By Michael Webster: Investigative Reporter May 15, 2008 8:00 AM PST

 

As reported executively in the Laguna/El Paso Journal the Calderon administration was expected to rush more Mexican Army troops to the border cities of Juarez, Tijuana, Mexicali, Palomas and others. The first leg of that troop enforcement became an reality yesterday -- Hundreds more Mexican army soldiers arrived in Juárez under the cover of darkness as part of Joint Operation Chihuahua, intended to augment the Mexican governments war against the Mexican Drug Cartels operating in Mexico. Juarez has been particularly hard hit with 300 plus murders that has rocked the city since the beginning of the year. Click on or Google:  Mexico's National Security Cabinet expected to declare a state of emergency

It is estimated that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their Para-military units throughout the country. With the expected injection of more soldiers being sent to the U.S. Mexican border cities those troops will number near 40,000.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush. Click on or Google: Merida Initiative Will It Work?

In recent months, and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. According to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

"It's almost like a military fight," Ahern said. "I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border."

As the cartels fight for territory, this carnage spills over to the U.S., Ahern said -- from bullet-ridden people stumbling into U.S. territory, to rounds of ammunition coming across U.S. entry ports.

At least Three Mexican border city police chiefs barely escaping with their lives have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates on the U.S. Mexican border where the Mexican drug wars are spilling across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Ahern.

They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP.

Ahern said the Mexican officials -- whom he didn't name -- are being interviewed and their cases are under review for possible asylum.

U.S. humvees retrofitted with steel mesh over the glass windows patrol parts of the border to protect U.S. Border Patrol agents against guns shots and large rocks regularly thrown at them. At times agents are pinned down by sniper fire as drug and human smugglers try to illegally cross into the U.S.

In the last few weeks, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican drug cartels and their gangs who are engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States.

LAGUNA JOURNAL ARCHIV